Notes kept because they continued to explain the work: mechanical design, learning, intelligent systems, attention, and the stories underneath them. Some began in application essays or project notebooks; others survived because they became useful rules.
Follow the design thread in the graph or walk its notes in the garden.
On Form
The strange part should make the practical part clearer.
Mystical density without grounding becomes fog. Grounding without mystery becomes paperwork.
On Work
Research that ships. Engineering that makes money.
I want to become excellent at the process of making engineers useful. Finding and defining the plane. Shifting the plane.
I love this job. It is so freaking fun to run around and test and hack my creations on the production floor.
Do things that will get more valuable when the models get smarter.
On Design
Separate what changes from what must be stable.
Good abstractions collapse complexity rather than manage it.
Immature design is too controlling—and it compromises the parts that really do have to be controlled.
Excited about designing simple affordances within complex environments.
Not just math that works from specifications, but math that works into those assumptions.
Game design is making the implicit explicit.
Experience drives design.
Programmers are musicians. Start from covers and make their own sound.
On Intelligence
Agent harnesses should be thin interfaces to scalable computation, not the place you stash the intelligence.
Always look at the data, especially when the benchmark is the product being sold.
The edge is useful only if you can return with receipts.
Do not labor to compete with the machine, own the machine.
The less you understand it, the more GPUs it takes.
Slop is when perception and intention are no longer linked.
Instinct is knowledge on derivatives.
It’s a lot easier to motivate and inspire a model than a person.
Capital is stamina.
On Attention
We are formed by our attention. That resource and its fleet of wired-in shortcut paths were not free.
I love analogy. Observing underlying similarities between disciplines seems to have given me an edge in both creative inspiration and effective communication.
Even in physics I was inspired by the meta of problem generation. How you structure the question determines the quality of the answer.
There are two archetypes within which I rest—the engineer, the artist, tinged with humanity.
On Narrative
Humans, unlike the animals, have the “happy burden” of choosing what they are prepared to see.
It’s a war on noticing; and ownership is the victory.
Just as we remain stuck in this reality by only seeing shadow—story—fiction, narrative may also liberate with power.
Spirit is empowered by story. Look at how these movements and religions springboard from story. How ideas spring from a narrative.
Memories are bottom up, so you can't compose them until narrative.
The story of my life is not how I succumb to pressure.
i want everything unfortunately
so i can't relax i have to have a great story
Verse
magical thinking
and sensemaking
are total opposites
impedance curves
line integrals
rule everything around me
Life's been a soundcheck so far.
head in the clouds while the toddler floods the sink
oh God I need a good story
and i don't know what's real and what's fake
I want a body that knows exactly who he is
moving and singing from his heart to his ears
but i can't stop or start or gate on lies
manifest
the narrative concedes
if i love you i am god
“i wanna love you god”
“now i love you. really”
never far from the truth
never with it
no knows
I want accountability
I want someone who knows me
And I want to be someone who is worth knowing